An error might occur with Snowflake tables under either of the following conditions:

• You try to read a Snowflake table that contains a timestamp variable.
• You try to create a Snowflake table that includes a datetime variable.

Under either of these conditions, the following error appears:

ERROR: Error binding parameters: [Snowflake][Support] (40131) The number '15' exceeds the maximum precision allowed (9).

Cause

The standard width for a Snowflake timestamp is 35 characters to allow for a time zone. If you do not specify a time zone, the width must be 29 characters. When the Snowflake driver reports to SAS that the width for the SQL_TYPE_TIMESTAMP data type is 35 characters instead of 29, the driver assumes that the extra 6 spaces are part of the decimal seconds. The error occurs because Snowflake allows 9—not 15 decimal digits.

Workaround

Snowflake offers the following driver option that you can set in the odbc.ini file for Linux systems and the Microsoft Windows registry for Windows systems: odbc_use_standard_timestamp_columnsize.

This Boolean parameter affects the column size that is returned. When you set it to true, the driver returns a length of 29 characters. Otherwise, it returns a length of 35 characters.

For more information, reference Snowflake's documentation on ODBC Configuration and Connection Parameters.